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schwit1 sends this news from the Washington Times:
"Pennsylvania police this week were pulling people to the side of the road, quizzing them on their driving habits, and asking if they'd like to provide a cheek swap or a blood sample — the latest in a federally contracted operation that's touted as making roads safer. The same operation took place last month at a community in Texas. Then, drivers were randomly told to pull off the road into a parking lot, where white-coated researchers asked if they'd like to provide DNA samples for a project that determines what percentage of drivers are operating under the influence of drugs or alcohol at given times. With uniformed police in the background, the researchers also offered the motorists money — up to $50 or so — for the blood or saliva samples."

Tons of people. People are taught to always listen to cops. Lately I'm more scared of the police than any criminal. Police can ruin your life and easily kill you without repercussions. Cops are trained to always maintain control of the situation no matter how minor or petty. That is why so many people are tazed, beaten, or outright murdered when they tell cops they are wrong or the cops are doing illegal things.

The thing is, the people who have something to hide because they're drunk or stoned behind the wheel are exactly the same people who won't buy into it. So, the statistics gathering will be highly skewed. Researchers probably know this because it's obvious, and it's likely just a cover story.

They aren't the same people. I wouldn't buy into it, and I've never been stoned, and am almost a non-drinker. I would just find getting pulled over and being asked for a cheek swab to be a bizarre and highly intrusive request.

That's not what he said. He said people with something to hide will be in that category, not that everyone in that category has something to hide. And he's right; this can't be considered an unbiased sample set.

If you actually believe its about driving drunk, where they already can do a Breathalyzer or blood sample? i have a bridge you might be interested in. Its about getting as many citizens in as they can into their DB, specifically the poor. they know the person driving that Lexus is gonna tell them to get bent while the mother of 3 in that 94 Dodge? Not so much.

I never thought I'd say this but I'm glad my beloved grandfather and great uncles are gone, they fought against fascism in WWII and this kind of gestapo shit would disgust the hell out of them. I could probably wrap his body in some copper wire and run my entire neighborhood from all the revolutions he's turning in his grave.

I urge everybody who hasn't seen it to watch Naomi Wolf's lecture [youtube.com] which shows how shit like this and the TSA intimidation fits into the bigger picture, because its fucking SCARY folks. This is the same plays that have been run since the time of Lenin and El Duce, get the population used to being confronted, cowed down and intimidated, makes things easier when they inevitably clamp down. Never forget that in 1930 Germany was a democracy and the NSDAP was a fringe bunch of kooks. Countries don't go from free to non free slowly, the shift is VERY fast but there is warning signs that a shift is occurring. I'd say shit like this and the NSA watching everything you do would be good indicators.

For those that think this kind of shit doesn't have a chilling effect? remember that when the wall fell it was found that the STASI had less than 7% of the population on their lists yet the entire population lived like they were always under the boot because everyone thought that they were one of the 7%. It really doesn't take much to break the will of a populace, just intimidation and fear used in the right places.

There is a huge amount of information to collect based on subjects' reactions to these requests for DNA. At the very least, the cops must be compiling a naughty/nice list indexed to license plate based on who accepts a cheek swab. Making the link from license plate to individual is pretty easy, especially if they're also taking video of their proceedings. People are forced to play the game and there's no way to win.

That was my thought, also. So you're driving home at 2:00 AM from a late night code hacking marathon, the cop checks your plate, which is common practice for cars on the road late at night, [1] sees that you declined an optional cheek swab 3 months ago, and pulls you over for "weaving". It's easy to imagine getting extra scrutiny in the future for declining a swab now.

[1] I worked nights for an 18 month contract once, going home in the wee hours, and was pulled over... oh, maybe eight or nine times during that stint, for really bizarre reasons, including "weaving" and not signaling a lane change when two lanes converged into one. (Seriously?) They'd check my papers, and let me go. I finally asked an officer, respectfully, why this was happening so often, and in a rare moment of candor, he said they consider a single car late at night to be a warning sign, and "we have to pull you over for something" in order to check you out.

The point though was that those that are drunk or stoned are very unlikely to consent. Other groups that aren't stoned or drunk will be unlikely to consent as well, but it still skews the results to the point that they are useless.

In college I worked with a lot of police, I was associated with on-campus security.I noticed there were essentially two types of cops, and they seemed to inhabit both ends of the spectrum.The first type was the actual caring, honest, hard working, do anything to protect others type. He became a cop to actually help and serve. I saw one climb out on a ten story ledge to bring in a jumper, and that cop had a documented fear of heights.The second type was the exact opposite: He loves the power, and got into the police so he could push people around. He's the guy who really enjoys giving jawalking tickets.

It's almost like the job description pulls the best and worst of society, with not a lot of middle ground in there.

As a one time police officer who has been out of that line of work for almost 20 years I have to disagree with you. There are good cops. They are few and far between but they exist. You're on to one thing though and it's something that a lot of people just don't seem to understand. The police (speaking of the whole group and still maintaining that some do not fall into this group) are by and large exceptionally racist, which many people realize but what they don't get is that the police only really see two races. "Blue" and "You". Ok, it's not technically a racial issue but the reason I put it like that is because it's approached the same way by the police. I know because I was surrounded by people like that. If you're blue you're a fellow officer and most of them will tolerate a great deal in another officer. Crossing a line or two is nothing. A police officer has to almost be cornered before he'll hold another police officer to the same standard he'll hold you or I to. Even then it doesn't always end as it should because another officer further up the food chain will head that off if possible once the situation has moved beyond the public eye. I never really thought about it at the time but when I was in law enforcement I rarely kept my registration up to date. I drove one car for over two years without having to get it inspected or paying the registration fee. When I got pulled over I just whipped out "Badge Americard" and was given a pass. I drove as fast as I wanted without a care in the world. That's little stuff but it scales up. I didn't leave the profession out of outrage either. I left because I hurt my back (at home, not work related in any way) and had to move to a less physical career but when I did leave and stepped back I realized that I was part of a system that is almost entirely made up of bad cops. It's just that most of them are bad with a little "b".

And I find the opposite. Videos like "don't taze me bro" and the OWS pepper sprayings show the cops are quite willing to harm any civilian they don't like. Piss off a cop, go to the hospital. It is that simple. When the LEOs stop treating everyone else like shit, it might slow down. Every LEO I know who I would be friends with (a number were family or friends of family I had no "choice" about) quit. Every one because LEOs no longer protect and serve. An engineer/paralegal friend I know joined the FBI. She knew they were looking for lawyers and engineers, and thought there would be some investigations using those skills. Maybe even something that could affect US security. Nope, she was sent to the South to run investigations on Katrina. The FBI spent billions investigating millions in fraud, most of the fraud from people who lost everything who mis-stated the value of items trying to turn their complete loss into a more positive situation. Yes, the FBI was tasked with spending millions to investigate $50 in fraud and throw someone in jail for $1,000,000 or prision time for a $50 loss. After all, we have to be tough on crime (while not investigating Wall Street).

Shit like that is why OWS happened. Yeah, there were a few well-publicized cases of someone outside LA who never lived there claiming a loss. But the cast majority of the time and effort was spent on people with actual loss. Many of whom were punished for making an honest mistake, then lying about it because they were embarrassed. That agent quit when her sentence to Katrina fraud was continually extended.

Oh, right, you stupid motherfucker, this Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] was written just for kicks, right?

I've got multiple relatives in law enfrocement, and they are shitheads. They think tazing people is actually downright hilarious, and no, they never ever report on each other's fuckups. I just had ate Thanksgiving dinner with a couple of them, and you are beyond clueless. They range from podunk local cops to big city cops (and one county deputy thrown in; no state folks). Most of them are prior military (as am I), but the problem is they think they're still in the USMC and the US Army. Everybody else are little people.

They're all bad, and in my mind they're all potential danger to the average law abiding citizen. This is why the Five Seven [wikipedia.org] should be your best friend, along with just about any decent long gun that'll punch the ticket on a punk wearing level II or IIIA body armor.

Oh yes, and this is the norm [youtube.com]. One dog was caged (and shot in the cage) and the other was a fucking Corgi.

Bad compared to what? To the ideal Officer of the Law? The one that hangs out with the ideal Communist Citizen and the ideal Hereditary Autocrat?

Or bad compared to a gang member, a warlord's soldier, or even security consultant?

I have never lived in a neighborhood where law enforcement dares not thread, or a country where warlords are the only authority. They do exist on this planet, though. On the other hand, I've lived in post-Communist Bulgaria, and saw what happened when the police becomes, for one reason or another, unwilling or unable to enforce the law.

One month, you could spend the night in the park, with your girlfriend, on a blanket.

The next, thugs were dismantling public property and infrastructure (from park benches to power transformers) and crooks were running gambling operations everywhere, beating up everyone who dared explaining their tricks to their marks.

One month later, no house, store, or vehicle was safe unless you were willing to defend it yourself. A lot of people learned that being in right does not make you invulnerable.

A few months later, those who had been successful at defending theirs, started defending other people... for a price. So your property was safe, if it bore a sticker saying "This X is insured by Y until Z." Well it was safe until Y was on the top of the heap, and of course, only until Z. And Y's members were raping, beating up and extorting as much as they conscience allowed them. Some had pretty enabling consciences.

I do not know what had happened since. I left. I know that I will take the worst policeman I've ever encountered in the US, before I trust the best 'security consultant' I've heard of.

We need law enforcement. What we have is less than perfect. We should strive to make it better. It is still in a whole different category than not having law enforcement. And anyway, 'Not having law enforcement' is unsustainable. There's enough people who would pray on others that it becomes inefficient for society's member to defend themselves individually. Soon enough, someone steps up to provide the service, and chances are it's not the one you wish would.

And yeah, it is true that those some of those people end up in law enforcement. At least, many of them have incentives to at least pretend to play by the rules.

But you can defend yourself from a "bad guy" with violence. If you use violence to defend yourself from a "bad cop" who is illegally applying force, you get a body bag and some drugs planted on your corpse. I saw a recent show on police training, and it looked more psychologically damaging than military basic training. Drill sergeants screaming opposing commands and berating the trainees for everything. The training camp in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is tame by comparison. "NO!"

If they want to serve the public, they can start by opposing our government. Being hired muscle for the aristocracy doesn't help anyone but the aristocracy. All the property crime in the country doesn't add up to even a percent of the fraud committed by banks. All the violent crime in the country doesn't add up to the lives that could be saved by throwing a wrench in the military industrial complex, or the agriculture industry, or the insurance industry.

No "good person" can support this government in any respect. The "actual bad guys" are the ones in Congress and corporate board rooms throughout the country. Find me a cop who is willing to arrest James Clapper, and I'll show you a good cop. The rest of them are "good Germans" at best.

I sure don't teach Them to do that. Every defense Lawyer, Prosecutor, and police Officer I have ever spoken with has consistently told Me the same thing: if the Police say They want to talk with You, You give one answer, "Not without My Attorney's approval."

According to the news story I read, a lot of people in Texas "bought" that, because they were under the impression they had no choice. One woman, in an interview, said she was intimidated by the police questions and thought she had to comply.

That news story (apologies, I don't have a link) also claimed that their breath was being sampled by an experimental "non contact" breathalyzer device without being notified in advance and without their consent.

He's likely referring to the presidential election. As the electoral votes are awarded on a popular vote, with gerrymandered districts NOT figured (directly..) into the outcome, he clearly forgets that the State GOP has deemed that their continued representation of a minority through use of gerrymandered districts is more important than having a representative democracy.

I can attest to this, in my younger days I worked assisting glaziers working at a Naval hospital doing some window work. My job was to go before them and clean windows so they could apply solar film (read tint) to the windows. We were required to wear hard hats, what I found was that while walking around the hospital wearing the hard hat no one questioned your presence anywhere including an empty operating theater.

While I agree in theory to refusing, in my state (and others, perhaps all), you have to sign consent to give police samples for the purpose of alcohol/drug testing prior to getting you license. Refusing such a search is grounds for revocation of your license and worse. It does not matter if it is a traffic stop or some sort of checkpoint (papers please), probable cause and 4th amendment rights are gone because you agreed when you signed your drivers licence.

Next you'll say that officer testimony that "I smelled alcohol on his breath" should be inadmissible in court.

I suggest you don't try to predict what I'll say, because most of the time you'll be wrong.

I do think it should be admissible in court. I do NOT, however, think it should be accepted as gospel. It's just one person's word against another, and it matters not one damned bit if that other person is a police officer. They make notoriously bad witnesses.

"Personally, I think that agreeing to this type of "surreptitious search" should be a requirement for renewing your drivers' license."

You are entitled to your opinion. I do not share it, for a number of very good reasons.

Among those reasons is that breathalyzers do not accurately reflect blood alcohol. If you just had one drink and are leaving the bar, it's going to set the thing off. There is VAST potential for abuse here.

If you were pulled over without probably cause so that the officer smell your breath then yes, it should be only be inadmissible in court it should be recognized as an unreasonable search. Pulling me over and making me open my windows so my breath can be searched is no different than knocking on my door and demanding entry so the police can look around. Both make sense when there is probable cause that a crime is being committed. Both are unreasonable searches otherwise.

Let the dogs come. Search without probable cause is illegal, and simply denying consent does not constitute probable cause.

ACLU is likely warming up the cannons over this one already. Still, it comes back to knowing your rights and standing up for them. Cops will intimidate, that's what they do. They are held to standards of legality, not decency. Just because they're scary doesn't mean you have to consent to shit, but once you do they can legally do many things they'd otherwise be prevented from.

Refusing an illegal search can still get you pepper sprayed or tased. Cops are only held to standards of legality in exceptional cases. When was the last time you heard of a police officer sent to prison for brutality? You can push your luck if you want to.

[IANAL:] Unfortunately you're wrong about this. In Caballes v. Illinois the Supreme Court found that a dog can be run around any vehicle during a traffic stop. If the dog signals, the officer then has probably cause to search a vehicle. The only limitation on this is that if the dog is not on the scene at the time of the stop, that the stop cannot be prolonged to wait for the dog to arrive. They can only hold you for as long as it would reasonably take to conduct the business of a traffic stop.

Mod parent up. This actually happened to me, and a dog did show up and ran circles around my car. Didn't signal though, maybe he had a cold that day.:)
Another trick they use is telling you that your car will be impounded and searched anyway (first part could be true, latter part is a lie), so you might as well let them search it now. They also like to get REALLY pissed off to intimidate you into giving in. He yelled, "Why? Do you have something to hide?" I told him I was exercising my rights and he laugh

Because they can say there are drugs in your car on command. And remember those 10% of bad cops we talked about up there? They're just scummy enough to plant said drugs in your disassembled car. Good luck convincing the jury that you weren't guilty since that was obviously the reason you didn't want a search.

Of course in the US asking ANY question when you've been told to do something by an officer is "Resisting Arrest" and can get you in a LOT of trouble!
So if you think it may be an official stop (for whatever) reason you just do what you're told for risk of getting into serious trouble!

I want to know what the hell pretext the people were pulled over for in the first place.

If you're talking about the Texas incident, they simply pulled a couple of squad cars across the street to block it, and then officers directed victims...err, suspects...err, perps...err, citizens who happened to be driving down that street into an unused parking lot where they were detained and interrogated.

Maybe if it began costing a couple of LEO lives whenever they did this kind of totally un-Constitutional crap it would tend to reduce such violations. I say this having cops in the family.

I was in a Comcast office trying to trade in a set-top box for a CableCard (which is a whole separate pile of bullshit by itself). As you might expect, this inevitably resulted in the rent-a-deputy (not just a security guard, but a damn officer of the state!) that Comcast had hired to deal with irate customers (i.e. all of them) taking notice of the situation. First he told me to leave for "disturbing the peace." Then, he followed me out the door and stopped me, which is when I asked "am I being detained?" After waffling on the question, he told me to go back in the store and deal with the customer service rep because otherwise they wouldn't count the set-top-box I'd put on the counter as "returned" and keep charging me for it (as if Comcast's incompetence is his problem).

I almost should have suggested that if Comcast did fail to log the return then I could just cite him as a witness to prove it and then left anyway, but -- like I said -- I genuinely wasn't sure if he would have arrested me if I tried.

Twenty or thirty years ago there used to be people called "journalists" whose job it was to (a) collect enough data so you could figure out what happened, and (b) write it up in an intelligible story.

Look at the linked story *critically*. How does the "reporter" know DNA was being taken? What is his source for this, or is he just guessing?

This story is basically rumor -- passing along what's on the grapevine. There's no actual reporting here. If there were, that would answer the questions a reasonable person might have. For example: are the researchers collecting DNA or not? And who *are* these researchers? Can we get a name please? Or an institution?

Back in the day a reporter would have identified the researchers and called them up for an interview, or at least a statement from the research institution's public affairs office. He'd look up the grant in the federal records and find out whether or not the researchers had been granted money to collect DNA and what they are being paid to do with it (yes, you can do that!). He'd may even have interviewed people on the institutional review board (required by US law) that approved the project.

But the "reporter" in this case did none of this. She appears not to have done *any* verification or independent research. A story like this would take a real reporter two or three days to nail down, not two or three phone calls.

I'm not saying some horrendous violation of civil liberties could not have taken place, I'm saying the writer of the article didn't do enough work for anyone to decide what did or did not happen. This is not reporting, it's *blogging* under a byline.

I don't disagree on the quality of reporting. But this NHSTA funded study is real and has been covered several times in the national press. The author of the article assumes the reader is already aware of said study. It's basically a redo of this 2007 study.

It's covered on Ron Paul's website. I wouldn't call this a "rumor". It's a reality and a poorly written article that makes assumptions about it's readership knowledge about current events. Just because you don't know about these research projects doesn't mean it's rumor. It's good research and helps policy makers understand the real danger of impaired driving. I don't like how it's being done or that cops are used but it's still valid research that's needed in the continuous drive to make our roadways safer.

Come on, of course it's just for study. Why else would the National Science Academy form the Pacific Research Institute for Chemical Knowledge? What, to get DNA linked to drivers licenses? Of course not! The National Science Academy already has all of that information.

This is just a benign, voluntary research campaign. So please, listen to the Pacific Research Institute for Chemical Knowledge and just hand over your DNA. We would also appreciate a few ovums from a selection of healthy, attractive ladies aged 18-25. For research purposes of course!

They don't stop everybody, they stop, say, every third car. And they use high-pressure sales techniques to try to get "biological samples". But they actually don't arrest people they find impaired; they try to arrange transportation for them. And they don't claim to actually collect or register DNA, just the presence of drugs. I don't think that makes it right, but let's at least be accurate about what they're doing.

They abused their power and position in the community to forcibly detain motorists under false pretenses .

There is only ONE instance in which an officer can use a marked vehicle (never stop for unmarked ones) with their lights and/or sirens to pull a citizen over. The officer either witnessed a crime or has reasonable cause to suspect that a crime has been committed.

Yes, using the lights and/or sirens is forcible detainment. It's not like you have a choice do you?

It falls under the same bullshit of a fishing expedition. The cop pulls you over just to look inside the windows and fuck with you. Asks a bunch of questions trying to trip you up, to obtain a legal reason for detaining you in the first place when all they had was a hunch .

We don't need any further accuracy into their actions. Absolutely nothing justifies that initial act of forcible detainment.

The state should lose a couple million dollars in nice fat settlements to everyone pulled over. It's the only way they ever learn.

I'd really like to hear from someone who was pulled over and refused to participate. If that was they end of it and they were allowed to drive away, it's still an abuse of power to have police stopping people to ask them to participate in a research study, but it's less bad than coercing people into participating.

Pretty much all studies involving human subjects in the U.S. have to be approved by a review board for compliance with ethical and safety standards. This study is an obvious fail in multiple respects, and I can't imagine a reputable review board approving such a thing. And if it wasn't reviewed, the study participants^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H victims of the study probably have standing to sue.

US Government has a history of simply ignoring the rules it enforces for everyone else. I mean in the last century the have infected people with diseases, exposed them to radiation, dosed them with illegal drugs and exposed them to chemical weapons. Very frequently without the participants knowledge or consent. Sad truth is no matter what they say you really have no idea what is being tested. The scary thing about their past tests is that in more than one case they have actually caused people serious illnes

This is one of those things where LE thinks how easy their job would be and how much more effective they could be if they had everyone's DNA on file and people of course worry about anyone having that kind of power.

We're not Norway (unfortunately by my lights) people. If we dont' trust each other with this level of information,maybe that's because we know each other and we therefore ought to listen to ourselves.

Sure all knowledge and power and everything could *could* be used just totally for good and never for evil. And? And? And your argument is?

Pretending that a corrosive kind of corruption isn't being enabled with these kinds of god-level knowledge of what everyone does, is, thinks, where they go and who they talk to- pretending that this doesn't enable evil (as well as good) or that the evil is just SO unlikely, is just stupid and quite frankly anyone trying to pass themselves off as incensed that I should worry about this , or to paint me as WAAAAY out there, is not even naive in my view, but most likely a manipulative liar.

We know ourselves. We grew up here , went to elementary school here, got our first jobs here and we've seen what we've seen and know what we know about ourselves. Thus the popular resistance to such measures. .

Maybe they're just trying to find where "stupid" is in DNA. Anyone that blindly and for no reason provides "the authorities" with their DNA are the sheep that "the authorities" are looking for. And then they spice that gene into an army of zombie-people that they're making in a lab somewhere, to replace the population that stands in their way.

$50 is a lot more to a lot of people than you think. If you have a secure job or a lot of money it may seem like surrendering your privacy for nothing important. But for some people that means a chance to eat more than beans and rice this month, a phone card that could land them a job, or a 5 month overdue oil change.

Checkpoints were conducted Friday morning, Friday night and Saturday night at three different locations in St. Charles County, said sheriff’s Lt. Dave Tiefenbrunn.

...

Tiefenbrunn said even though the survey was voluntary he acknowledged that the public might not have thought they had any choice but to obey the officers. Because of that, he said, his department would not participate in such surveys in the future.

“It doesn’t give the public the impression that it’s voluntary if there’s a uniformed officer out there, so we would avoid that circumstance in the future,” he said.

...

In its statement, NHTSA said that it had been conducting such surveys for more than 40 years in roughly 10-year cycles.

The agency said more than 60 communities nationwide were participating this year, including St. Louis County, where checkpoints were conducted in September.

In 2007, more than 9,000 drivers were interviewed in 60 jurisdictions.

In all of these cases, there is no mention of how much money
the jurisdictions involved received from the feds for allowing
these actions to occur.

Can somebody point to a website with information regarding the study? If it is federally funded it must be publicly posted somewhere. Such studies typically require "informed consent" from the subjects. I would really like to see how do they obtain consent from the people being pulled over and how they justify instructing the police to pull over random drivers without probable cause. It would have been a different story if they sit in a parking lot and ask for samples drivers already stopped at the parking. The whole thing with the police pulling people over seems a bit too coercive for my taste.

Notice how they're only doing this in a few states? I have a feeling this sample collection has nothing to do with DUI or any research..... I have a feeling they're looking for someone specific via DNA from already-collected evidence in some ongoing case.

You can't detect drugs in DNA, but you can detect drugs and DNA from blood and cheek swabs. Misworded. Now people are all neurotic about their DNA being obtained when it's the content of alchohol and drugs in their system they're checking.

Yea, sure, because as we all know, the federal government has never, ever, lied, misrepresented, changed tack post facto, etc. Nope. Never.

If police manage the traffic control and indicate for you to pull over, how can you, before you comply, know that you are not under arrest? If it's a random DUI checkpoint, the same thing happens, but you are under arrest when he signals for you to pull over. Failing to pull over is a crime. Except when it isn't. And you can't know until after you comply or are killed by the cops for fleeing a legal stop.